


Falling So Hard, So Fast This Time

by clotpolesonly



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Human, Awkward Stiles Stilinski, Childhood Friends, F/M, FBI Agent Stiles Stilinski, Fluff, Future Fic, Post-High School, School Reunion
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-08
Updated: 2019-08-08
Packaged: 2020-08-11 20:44:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,395
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20159821
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/clotpolesonly/pseuds/clotpolesonly
Summary: Stiles was just showing off his badge to Harley—and it was totally acceptable because she’d asked to see it, okay, it wasn’t like he was just whipping it out at the merest opportunity to show off—when a very familiar voice called his name. The badge almost went flying in Stiles’ haste to turn around, and then there she was, all blonde curls and bright smile.“Heather!” Stiles said. “Wow, hi, you, uh, you look—”Older. Different. Good. Even more beautiful than she did at sixteen.





	Falling So Hard, So Fast This Time

**Author's Note:**

> I FINALLY WROTE AN ACTUAL POSTABLE STEATHER FIC!! i've been meaning to for literal ages and just haven't gotten around to it, so _thank you_ to bookwormcheerleader for prompting it to me. you the real MVP, babe <3

“This is gonna be _awesome.”_

Scott eyed the garishly done up doors to the old school gym dubiously. “I really didn’t expect you to be this excited about your ten year reunion. High school wasn’t exactly our golden years.”

“Exactly!” Stiles gripped Scott’s shoulder and gave him a shake. “Scott, buddy, have you looked in a mirror lately? You have abs now! And _I_ have abs now! You own your own practice and I have a real badge and a gun that I’m actually licensed to carry. We glowed the fuck _up_ since high school!”

“So you wanna show off to all the people who remember us as scrawny, awkward wannabes now that we’re hot and cool,” Scott said sagely. “Got it.”

Stiles squeezed his shoulder again. “Once more unto the breach, my friend.”

“Only better this time.”

“Damn straight.”

* * *

It was totally _so much better_ than actual high school had been. Sure, the gym still smelled like wet socks and dead rats, and the “nostalgic” music was every bit as terrible as it had been in a decade ago when it had been popular, but Stiles was definitely in the upper echelons of people whose lives had actually improved since graduation. Not many of his classmates could claim they were a bona fide special agent with the real, actual _FBI _and not be lying.

Prom king Jackson and his “junior partner at his dad’s law firm” shtick could stick that in his straw and suck it.

Stiles was just showing off his badge to Harley — and it was totally acceptable because she’d asked to see it, okay, it wasn’t like he was just whipping it out at the merest opportunity to show off — when a very familiar voice called his name. The badge almost went flying in Stiles’ haste to turn around, and then there she was, all blonde curls and bright smile.

“Heather!” Stiles said. “Wow, hi, you, uh, you look — ”

Older. Different. Good. Even more beautiful than she did at sixteen.

Her smile widened and, yes, her nose still scrunched up in exactly the same way it used to back when they’d passed notes in the back of Mrs. Finch’s AP biology class. Fuck, it was still cute too. Maybe even cuter now than back then.

A hand came down on Stiles’ shoulder, nearly tipping him over with how unbalanced he suddenly was.

“What I think Stiles means to say,” Scott put in, “is that you look great.”

Heather nodded at him. “Well, tell him that I say thank you, and that I think he looks great too.”

Scott’s elbow colliding with Stiles’ ribs jolted him out of the scratched record mode that was his brain had fallen into.

“Right!” he said. “Yes, great, thank you. You too. I mean, I — I didn’t expect to see you here.”

“I did go to this school,” Heather pointed out. “Was in your grade and everything.”

“No, I know that! Obviously, I know that, but you..." Stiles shrugged as nonchalantly as he could manage. “You left.”

Halfway through junior year. Some big promotion for her mom, a fantastic career opportunity she couldn’t pass up that took them all the way across the country to some up and coming New England city, too far away to justify coming back for holidays just to see old friends. Or old...whatever they had been to each other. Stiles had thought, at the time, that maybe they’d been moving toward something _else._

But then she’d been gone.

For a while they’d shared skype calls, some emails, a whole lot of facebook messages. Then it was meme posts shared to facebook walls and happy birthday texts. And then it wasn’t much of anything. Stiles had had new friends, new relationships, intensive academy training and specialized courses at Quantico, and he hadn’t had the time to think too hard about the high school sweetheart that had never even been his in the first place.

Only, now, here she was, right in front of him, scuffing the toe of her high heeled shoe along the wood paneling and ducking her head so that a stray curl fell into her face.

“I didn’t graduate here, no,” she allowed. “But I wanted to come back anyway. I missed it here.”

The least suave part of Stiles wanted to crack a joke, something about the good old days of dodge ball and suicide sprints, but the steady way Heather’s eyes were on him made his mouth a little dry and the flippant words wouldn’t come.

“Missed it enough to fly all the way from the east coast?” he asked instead.

Heather bit her lip. The pink swell of it dimpled under the white of her teeth.

“I’m actually in San Francisco now,” she admitted.

“Really?” Scott asked, and Stiles nearly had a heart attack; he’d completely forgotten that Scott was even there. “That’s great! What paper are you with now?”

Heather turned her smile on him. “The Chronicle.” Her eyes slid back to Stiles. “But I would’ve come back anyway! Even if I was still in New Hampshire. It would’ve been worth it to see everybody again.”

The words were on the tip of Stiles tongue — _By “everybody”, do you mean “me”? — _but those words were big and risky and carried nearly twelve years of buried feelings on their backs and they refused to take the leap.

Apparently he was speechless for too long. Just as Heather’s face started to fall, Scott cleared his throat.

“So, hey, Heather,” he said, bright and cheerful. “Do you maybe want to get a drink with Stiles sometime?”

One of Stiles’ arms, flung out in shock, knocked the cup of punch out of a nearby Greenburg’s hand. It went flying all over Tracey’s nice green dress. There was a lot of yelling and attempted mopping up and hand-slapping, and by the time the two of them had stormed out of sight, Stiles was ready to die of humiliation. Not least of all because Heather was _right there._

But she was, at least, still _there. _She was smothering a laugh behind her hand, one of the good ones that made her eyes crinkle up at the corners and sometimes ended in an actual snort. She held it in this time, sadly, but in the next second she’d produced a pen out of the tiny clutch purse she had in her hand.

“A drink would be great,” she said, ostensibly to Scott, but it was Stiles’ hand she grabbed and Stiles’ palm she scribbled a number onto. “Call me sometime, okay? I’m in town all week. You can show me that fancy badge Danielle was telling me about earlier.”

It took several very long seconds for Stiles’ brain to catch up with what was happening, and by the time it had, Heather was already halfway to the snack table. Before she could get swallowed by the crowd completely, Stiles managed to yell out after her, “_Yes!_ Yes, I will — I will do that! I’ll call you!”

She turned back over her shoulder to wave at him. He waved back a beat too late, a crowd of former band geeks drifting between them to block the line of sight. He let his hand fall, all the nervous tension draining out of him in an instant.

“Scott, buddy,” he said. “Did you really just ask Heather out on my behalf?”

“Well, _you_ clearly weren’t going to,” Scott chuckled, unrepentant. “Dude, what happened to being hot and cool?”

“Okay, in my defense, _I_ was not the one to say ‘hot and cool’,” Stiles pointed out. “That was you! You said ‘hot and cool’. I said ‘abs and badge’, which I still have, thank you very much.”

“Abs and badge _and Heather’s number,_” Scott reminded him smugly. “You’re welcome for that.”

Stiles looked down at his hand again, eyes tracing the digits there and committing them to memory on the off chance that they got smudged or washed off before he could enter them into his contacts. He was smiling too much to even _pretend_ to be annoyed at Scott’s interference.

“You know what else I said earlier?”

“What’s that?”

“I said tonight was gonna be awesome.” He tucked his hands into his trouser pockets and led the way toward the open bar with a new spring in his step. “And I was totally right.”

**Author's Note:**

> [rebloggable on tumblr!](https://clotpolesonly.tumblr.com/post/186855354401/steather-and-lets-say-future-all-human-au-if)


End file.
